


Winter's Kiss Part I: Willow on the Doorpost

by adeepeningdig, psifiend



Series: Winter's Kiss [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 21:53:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16273103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adeepeningdig/pseuds/adeepeningdig, https://archiveofourown.org/users/psifiend/pseuds/psifiend
Summary: "Everyone knew that Steve’s Ma came from somewhere else; somewhere that wasn’t Brook. It seemed unfathomable to Bucky, despite Steve’s drawings. There wasn’t anywhere outside of Brook. Just forest. People talked about her. It wasn’t right, because she was always nice, and she always set him home with salves for his father’s callused hands. Still, Bucky was dubious about magic. He’d never seen any magic. The only magic in his life was Steve and his stories and his drawings. Maybe that’s what Steve’s Ma meant by magic anyway."





	Winter's Kiss Part I: Willow on the Doorpost

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, I must thank psifiend for your amazing artwork and for putting up with my shenanigans. You're wonderful, psi.  
> Thanks also to yoda's yo yo, without whom this work would probably not exist. Thanks for your insights and your cheerleading.  
> Thank you also to devilpiglet for your keen eye and great editing skills.  
> This fic is the first in a planned trilogy. Enjoy.

 

**Part I: WIllow on the Doorpost**

Willow on the doorpost,

Water in the basin,

Be true and kind

My son.

 

It was inevitable that the people of Brook would talk. Sara Rogers did not arrive by carriage or caravan or even with a peddler. She came alone, by foot, as far as anyone could tell, and would not say from where she came.  Very few travelers came to Brook as of late- not by carriage or caravan or with peddlers. The people had been there for generations, taking wives and husbands from the neighboring villages. And yet, Sara Rogers had come to Brook and she was neither selling wares, nor passing through, nor come to marry.

She stood in the town square-  a small waif of a thing, shoes down to nothing, and threadbare.But her back was straight and her chin was lifted. The people of Brook were not unkind, but they were also deeply practical folk, and they did not know what to do with the girl who seemed to have no discernible skills or trades other than sleeping and eating very little of Innkeeper Toby’s good food. They did not know what to do with her so they talked. Josiah the Blacksmith was sure she came from the capital. “I’ve heard the way they speak there.  She speaks with a city accent.”

His wife, Kinde, shook her head,but did not pause her spinning. The capital was a legend, and she wasn’t quite sure it actually existed. But from the city or not, nothing good would come of this girl. All the of age men, and some not of age, were circling already. They wouldn’t admit it- Brook bred stalwart and sober men who didn’t tend towards flights of fancy or romance. But she could see the way they preened around her. New blood was new blood and  it was more interesting than old blood.

“As you say, Jos,” she answered, “but does it matter much where she’s from? She’s here now and it does not seem as if she intends to leave.”

“Well,” the blacksmith huffed, “we’ll find something to do with her. Widow Jones could use a minder.”

Sara, when it came to it, was not an especially good minder for Widow Jones, who was losing her memory in slow painful increments. It was not for lack of care- the townspeople were witness to the gentle way she took the Widow’s arm when, the week before the harvest, she’d had a fit outside of Henry’s bake shop, screaming and pulling off her clothing. It was only that Sara was a stranger and her presence disturbed the old widow more than anything else.

 It was not until little Liam Hurst stepped in a hornets’ nest, that Sara Rogers’s true value was discovered. The boys had been playing in the apple orchard on the edge of town, which was not a rare thing. Nor, when it came to it, was it a rare thing for the children to be stung every once in a while, for like children everywhere, they liked to poke at things with sticks. Every mother had a jar of Dr. Erskine’s poultice in their kitchens for stings and burns. Crying children were dealt with with a brusk, “whisht, it will stop hurting soon.”

 But Liam Hurst was stung, and stung all over- for he had stepped directly into the nest, and worse it seemed he could not breathe. His sister May’s screams brought the town rushing to the orchard and then rushing for the good doctor, though it was not likely there was much he could do- the boy was swollen all over and his little chest was still. But even before Dr. Erskine arrived, Sara had pushed herself through the crowd of people. There was a murmur that ran through the assembly as she knelt and placed her fingers at the boy’s throat.

 “Oh, don’t hurt him,” Molly Hurst whispered.

 Sara just shook her head as if clearing it, and then lifted Liam into her arms. “Let’s get this boy into a bed,” she said, “I can help, but he needs somewhere clean and quiet, and I’ll need hot water and bandages.”

 

Dr.  Abraham Erskine watched from the doorway of the Hurst house as the new woman tended to her patient. She looked young, but she obviously knew her trade. Her quick but gentle movements belied a familiarity with her craft and a competence that comes with experience. He made no move to stop her, or help her even. She had it in hand and his presence would only make her nervous and self-conscious.

 But when she looked like she had done all she could do- knuckling her back and pushing her hair back off her face, Dr. Erskine let himself into the room.

 “Are you a doctor?”  he asked, and she jumped.

 “Oh,” she said.

 “I’m sorry to startle you. My name is Dr. Erskine.”

 “No,” she said, “no. I’m not a doctor. I’m sorry I presumed- it’s just I knew how to help.”

 “You certainly did.” He leaned over to look at little Liam Hurst. His breathing was even, and though his skin was hot where it was not wrapped in bandages, he was not feverish. It looked as if he would make a recovery. Dr. Erskine wished he knew what she had used on him and where she had learned about it.

 “What’s your name, my dear?”

 “Sara. Sara Rogers.”

 “Well, Sara,” he said, smiling, “ the Hurst family was lucky you have come to to our little town, and it seems I am lucky as well, for I’ve been looking for an apprentice. Would you like to be a doctor?”

  
  
  
She found the bridge because she hadn’t been looking for it. She wasn’t looking for anything, she was running, fleeing like a deer, wolves on the one side, hunters on the other. Her husband was dead, her home was destroyed, her possessions taken, and she had not had her period in two months. The King’s soldiers were closing in.  What else was there to do but run?

 She knew the shape of the land reasonably well. She and Joseph had scoured maps by candlelight and hidden them away in the floorboards by day. Maps were more precious than gold. She hadn’t had time to grab them, but she could see them in her mind’s eye. She ran north against the Niewas, keeping off the roads until she reached its branch and then she fled east, along the Eiewas until she reached the bridge.

 The bridge was not marked on any of the maps she had seen. Nor was the road that led away from it and into a small rise. The air felt different - it wasn’t hot, or cold, but it held a sense of pressure building, like the moment before a storm breaks. Sara stepped back and cocked her head. She saw nothing to indicate a barrier of any kind- no circle of hawthorn trees, nor ring of unhewn stone- but maybe just maybe, there was a kind of shimmer in the air at a certain angle, like a spiderweb that can only be seen after the rain.

 Well, it didn’t matter much what magic made it - old or new-  she had to cross the river, so she shouldered her small bag and walked over the bridge.

 The bridge was just a bridge, and the water was just water; the forest lining the river bank was the same forest of oaks that lined the other bank, and yet somehow she knew that those she was running from would not find her here.

 Someone had made a pact with this place and shielded it well. Someone, years ago, had sworn an oath and the land had answered, sheltering whomever lived here- and she knew that someone must live here- the path was too well trodden, the trees too sparse to be anything other than young, man-planted forest. Now that she was on this side of the river, she could feel that pact pulsing through the earth, into the trees, the very livingness of the place. It was old, and wearing thin, but it was there.

 Sara stumbled a few paces and then sank to the ground, laughing. She laughed in hysteria until she began to weep. She wept for her murdered husband, for her house, her maps, her windowsills of flowers; she wept for her friends, her city, and the unborn child in her womb who would know none of these things. She wept and slept the dreamless sleep of the grieving and then got up and continued down the path, around the bend, and down into the town she would come to know as Brook.

 From afar, the town looked like many other a town Sara had passed- houses crowded around the common square, thinning out in a circumference, fields and orchards surrounding it. To the east she could see a wisp of chimney smoke rising- it was not the only town in the area, which was a comfort of sorts. If this town was unfriendly, there would still be somewhere else to run to.But she wasn’t aware just how sheltered the town she had stumbled into was, until that first night at the inn. In her exhaustion she had asked the innkeeper’s kind wife, who was helping her into borrowed nightclothes, “have the King’s men come through here lately?”

 The woman - Elfre - looked at her oddly and placed a hand on Sara’s forehead, “The King? There’s been no king here for years. Go to sleep now. I can see you’ve traveled a long way. It will be better in the morning.”

 As the days passed, Sara came to know that indeed, there was no king. The three towns in the valley, Brook, Rose and Emmer- as if named by children imagining a town- existed in a triangle of self-reliance. There was a mill in Brook, off the river, and the wheat came from Emmer, which was situated on the flattest part of the valley. Wool and lamb came from Rose as did the beautiful furniture, for the one carpenter in the area lived there. Such, it seemed, was the way in the valley.

 For a while, Sara was sure she was dreaming, or worse hallucinating. But her belly grew with each passing week, so she knew she was not dreaming. And if she were hallucinating, surely she would hallucinate Joseph- his red hair falling into his eyes, his long fingers; the way he looked at her in the mornings when he thought she was still sleeping. Surely that would be the vision she would see. Anyway, the blacksmith’s wife was too annoying for it all to be a figment of her mind.

 No, Brook was real, and every day she went out into the forest and laid her ear to the ground, just to feel, to be assured that the barrier still stood. She didn’t dare ask the townspeople about it, for she had a feeling that it was the type of thing that would vanish if you thought about it too hard. Instead she lay there, hand over her growing belly, willing it to remain for as long as her child lived and the child’s children and their children. Let the evil and sorrow that had visited her life not visit her child at all. She would re-make the pact with her own blood if it would keep what remained of Joseph safe.

 

Dr. Erskine changed everything- everything she thought she knew about Brook. The older Howlies had spoken of him in reverence and also grief. He had disappeared a few years before Sara joined, and it had been considered a truth that the King had had him killed. She had been shocked into silence when he had introduced himself in the Hurst boy’s room. Now though, standing in his workshop on what was the first day of her apprenticeship  she couldn’t help herself.

 “I cannot believe you are alive,” she said.

 “Excuse me?”

 “I cannot believe you are alive. All the Howlies thought were dead, and now everyone is dead, and yet here you are alive and well.”

 The Doctor sat down. “What? What are the Howlies?”

 “You know who they are!” she stamped her foot in frustration. “They worshipped you - you were the heart of the rebellion and then you just disappeared.”

 “Slow down, slow down, my dear,” Dr. Erskine held his hands up in a soothing gesture. “Come, Sara. Why don’t you sit and start from the beginning. You’re from Istaban, yes?”

 She nodded.

 “I’m also from Istaban,” he continued, “and yes, some would say I was part of the rebellion. I certainly made it known that I did not like the way the King was leading the country, but I did not know the Howlies. I think, perhaps, they were after my time. Tell me about them.”

 “They- we, were a group active against the King, or rather Pierce.  They started out at universities- that’s where I joined-”

 “And where you got your training,” the Doctor smiled.

 “Yes, where I got my training. But then the King closed the universities and so we went underground. We thought we were safe, mostly. We tried to make a nuisance of ourselves, more than anything. Our group didn’t have the numbers or powers to be considered a real threat- or so I thought. ”

 “Ah,” he said softly, wincing, “that is why you are here.”

 “Yes. It was- all in one night. No time to warn each other. I don’t know how they knew how to find everyone- there was never a list, or a register - someone must have turned, I don’t know. But it was all in one night- the soldiers came crashing into the house. They pulled Joseph out of bed. They-”

 “Hush now, Sara. It’s alright. You’re safe.”

 “I just ran. I didn’t take anything, I went. And then there was this bridge, and I felt a barrier, and you’re here. What is this place?.”

 “The barrier is mine,” Dr. Erskine said, “but the magic here is much much older than it. Like you, I too was running for my life. After I confronted Counselor Pierce, I was certain that if I stayed in Istaban death would find me one way or another, so I ran. I certainly didn’t know about the Howlies. If I had, maybe I would have stayed. It is always the young people, you know, who have the courage the elders don’t. But I didn’t know about the Howlies. I thought I was alone and I thought I had no choice.”

 “I too, found the bridge and felt the magic in the earth here. I don’t have powers, but I am knowledgeable enough in True Names to give the inherent magic a bit of a push. For better or for worse, I had to hide this place from the world, and so inadvertently I have also hidden the world from this place. So you are safe now, my dear, and your unborn child as well.”

 Sara looked down at her stomach. “How?”

 He smiled again. “I have been a doctor for many years now. I know when a woman is pregnant.”

 “No, I mean, how long can you hold the barrier?”

 “I don’t know,” he said, “but long enough. Rest now and don’t worry. Brook is a fine place with fine people, and you have skills that are useful to them. I know it doesn’t seem so now, but everything is going to be fine.”

  


Sara let out a sigh, stretching her back. It had been a long few days, but now she could finally rest easy. The rooms above Dr. Erskine’s workshop seemed massive in relation to the small apartment she had shared with Joseph in Istaban, but at the same time they felt thin and insubstantial- all the buildings in Brook did. She was used to red brick and stone, not plaster and wood. Well, they would do. They would do fine indeed.  There was a fine hearth and a fine bed and a small table and a larder. There was even space for a kitchen garden out back. It was a place to start a family. It was a place to raise a child with someone.

 Enough of that, she told herself. There’s no use dreaming of what could have been. There was a lot to do before the rooms were really habitable. She should get on with her tasks.

 A knock at the door stopped her just as she was considering which room was the most dire. A dark haired woman stood in her doorway. She was heavily pregnant and panting a bit - Sara was discovering that outer stairs leading up to the rooms got more and more difficult the bigger she got, and felt a pang of sympathy.

 “Yes?”

 “Winifred Barnes,” the woman held out her hand, her grey eyes warm, “but most people call me Winnie.”

 Sara took her hand. “Sara Rogers,” she said.

 “I know,” the woman replied. “I heard that you were letting the rooms here, and I figured you’d need a bit to eat tonight- you’re probably not really settled yet.”  

 Only then did Sara notice the basket at her feet. Winnie began to bend to lift it up-

 “Oh no,” Sara interrupted her, sweeping down and grabbing the basket.

 Winnie grinned at her, following her into the house. “Sometimes I’m afraid that if I bend down I’ll just get stuck that way.”

 Sara laughed. “I guess that’s something to look forward to.”

 Winnie eyed her stomach. “Your first?” Sara nodded. “Mine too,” Winnie said.  She dropped into the one chair in the room, groaning. “I cannot wait for this to be over.”

 Sara hadn’t really thought about the end of her pregnancy or even the fact of being pregnant as a state of being. She hadn’t had the wherewithal. Maybe she could remain pregnant forever. No, not forever, for just enough time to mourn and to come to terms. But then, she couldn’t fathom that she would ever have enough time to come to terms.

 Winnie cleared her throat. “Go ahead, open it.”

 Sara peered into the basket- a loaf of good, brown bread and half a dozen speckled eggs sat nestled at the bottom.  Winnie had also brought fresh willow for the doorway and a pitcher of water from the river for the simple stone basin built in to the corner of the main room of the house. They seemed to take these things more literally in Brook than they had in Istaban- in Istaban willow was often carved into doorways or doors, but nobody bothered with fresh willow, and the basins built into the homes were more for decoration than anything else.

 “It’s all superstition,” Sara remembered a classmate of hers saying with great authority, though she did not know from where he drew  that authority, “just tales. It’s a way of making sure that there is fresh water in the house- it doesn’t actually have to be from the river”- as if there was some other source water in Istaban. Like here, there was only the river.

 But the people of Brook took their duties seriously. Here there was fresh willow at every door post and water in every basin. It was odd, for though from what she could tell, they too, followed the same seasons - summer, harvest, winter and spring- there was no accompanying myth to go with it- no Winter Lord, no Summer King. She wondered what stories they told their children during the long, dark winter nights. Maybe they didn’t tell stories at all, for they seemed a wholly practical folk.

 “It’s not much,” Winnie said, breaking Sara’s thoughts,  “but it should see you through.”

 “Thank you,” tears started at Sara’s eyes. It seemed that she cried at everything now.  “Thank you. You really didn’t have to.”

 “Oh, whisht,” Winnie dismissed her protest with a wave of her hand. “I didn’t have to, but I wanted to.”

 Sara ducked her head. “Thank you,” she said again.

 Winnie hoisted herself to her feet with what seemed to be great effort. “I should be going. George should be home soon.” A soft smile played at her lips. “It you need anything, you just let me know. We’re just passed the green. And if you can’t find me, just ask. Everyone knows everyone around here.”

 Sara shut the door behind her, smiling. Oh, this house would do fine indeed.

 

The Rogers boy was born a small, sickly waif of a thing, just like his mother. The midwife, come from Emmer, was sure he wouldn’t survive his first week.   She wasn’t sure his mother would survive either. But survive, Sara did, and so did Steve, named after her father. He survived his first year, and then his second, despite a summer fever that almost killed him, and left Sara white-faced and exhausted, too worn down to protest at the kindness of her neighbors. She kept to herself mostly, with the exceptions of Winnie and Dr. Erskine, but Molly Hurst had never forgotten what she had done for her son, and Elfre the Innkeeper’s wife had taken a liking to her somehow, so they had rallied their own friends, and marched into Sara’s house with food and hands to hold the baby and rags to clean the house. They made sure Sara slept for a few hours and when she woke it was to Winnie gently placing a dozing Steve in her arms, and a house that was spotlessly clean.

 And yet, though he grew and began to talk quicker than any of the other babies his age, Steve remained small and prone to sickness. Sometimes Sara thought that maybe it was her own ambivalence and grief that had caused him harm in the womb and she was filled with guilt. Joseph would chide her gently if he were alive - ah, he would say, and the rain to fall, did you cause that too? Still, her own Ma had told her that she had been a healthy child, and Joseph, too, so she did not know where all this illness was coming from, and could not help but blame herself.

 Dr. Erskine shook his head at her, in his gentle way, “it’s simply the way some babies are,” he said. “He’ll grow out of it.”

 But Steve did not grow out of it, in fact, he stopped growing altogether, and Sara began to reluctantly resign herself to the fact that raising him would be nothing but a struggle. Along with, or perhaps despite, his weak body he had an abundance of character. Her son  was a smart and stubborn child who knew what he wanted and was determined to get it by any means. He learned to crawl brow-down on the floor for his neck muscles were not strong enough to hold up his head. Unable to see where he was going he would run smack into walls and furniture, howling when he did so- not so much in pain, it seemed, but frustration.

 Sara spent her days in a state of sheer exhaustion and intense pride. There were days when she wanted nothing more than to smother her child, if only to get him to stop screaming, stop getting his grubby hands everywhere, and stop demanding her attention every moment of the day. Other days, she wanted to hold him close forever. She studied his long, light colored eyelashes,and  the creases in his toes. She laughed as he tried to pull himself up onto his feet, using the edge of her chair for leverage and then fell back down onto his little bottom with a grunt. His face screwed up, but amazingly he did not cry, and instead grasped the edge of the chair once more and tried again.

  


Steve tapped his fingers impatiently on the wooden bench as he waited for Mistress Blythe to finish their lesson. His cheek throbbed and his skinned knee burned, but he wasn’t allowed to go home to his mother, and more importantly, her salve.

 “It’s not so bad, Steven.”  his teacher had said. “There’s no need for you to go running to your mother. Maybe sitting in discomfort some will teach you to stop fighting so much.”

 In truth, it wasn’t so bad, but it still wasn’t fair. He didn’t mean to fight. He just got angry sometimes. It wasn’t fair that Robert could climb the crab apple tree and he couldn’t even reach the first branch. It wasn’t fair that Becca Barnes, who was two years younger than him could beat him in a race that he wasn’t supposed to be running, because sometimes he couldn’t breathe. Nothing was fair and it made him angry. He didn’t really know how that led to fighting- it just did- and fighting led to scraped knees and aching cheekbones. His Ma would sigh when he got home- but it wasn’t fair.

 Something hit the bench with a soft thwack. He ignored it. Then whatever hit the bench hit the back of his head. Steve whirled around, hissing, “what?”

 Bucky Barnes, Becca’s brother, was grinning at him from across the room.

 “What?” Steve whispered again.

 Bucky just shrugged and crossed his eyes at Steve.  Bucky was strange. Even though they were the same age, Bucky had started his schooling before Steve, who was beset by illness the summer before he was meant to start, and so remained home with his Ma for one more year. And yet, Bucky had seemed to take an interest in Steve. Steve had no idea why. The children his age thought him slow, both in terms of his schooling and his ability to play the fast rough games they liked to play, and the other children were younger than him and so obviously- boring. But Bucky seemed determined to befriend him.

 “Listen, listen,” Bucky sprinted after Steve as they left the schoolhouse,  and then overtook him. “You gotta learn how to throw a punch, Steve. I can teach you. My Da taught me.”

 “Leave me alone, Barnes.” He would just make a fool of himself with his weak arms and wheezing lungs. There was no need to hand Bucky anything that could be used against him.

 “Why? You’re not so bad.  You’ve got a lot of spirit. If you knew how to punch you might even win a few skirmishes.”

 “No.”

 “You’re very stubborn, Rogers, you know that?”

 Well his Ma had been telling him so his whole life. Steve scuffed at the dirt, looking at his shoes.

 “I’m not making fun of you. I’m not.”  

 Steve rubbed at his eyes, then winced. His cheek was still sore. “I’ve got to get home to my Ma  now. I have chores to do.”

 “Alright.” Bucky said, slapping him on the back, and grinning. “Tomorrow, then.”

 

Steve’s chores were not quite chores.  Oh, he helped his Ma in all sorts of ways - bundling herbs for drying, stripping rags for bandages, sweeping out the storeroom and kitchen everyday - but after school his chores were more lessons.

 “Now,”  Ma said, “let’s review those Names we learned last week, yes?”

 Steve sighed. Normally he liked his lessons with his Ma. She was so busy he sometimes felt he barely ever saw her, and this was time for just the both of them. Plus at the end she always gave him some honeyed milk. But today he had a trout up his leg, thinking about Bucky Barnes and his strange offer.  

 “I’m bored,” he complained. “Nobody else has to learn stupid Names after school.”

 Ma clicked her tongue. “Nobody else is my son.”

 “But why?”

 She tapped his hand. “Why what? Why are you my son?”

 Steve glared at her. “Why do I have to learn all this? You said they don’t even have power.”

 “If I told you, ‘because I say so’, would you listen?”

 “No.”

 Ma sighed. “These words, these True Names, they do not have power here in Brook, but elsewhere they have power, and one day you may need them.”

 “There is no elsewhere.”

 “You most certainly are being contrary today. Did something happen at school? Besides your usual fighting, I mean. You cannot hide those scrapes on your hands from me, Steve.”

 Steve kicked at the stool leg. “Nothing,” he grumped. “Nothing happened.”

 Ma cocked her head at him, raising an eyebrow.

 “Fine. Bucky Barnes was throwing paper at me during class. He shouldna done that. It’s a waste.”

 “I see,” his Ma said, not smiling in a way that meant she really wanted to be smiling. Steve sighed again. “Come now,” she took his hands, “I know you’re distracted. We’ll make this a quick lesson. Let’s go over the Names again.”

 “Garden-Throat-Sage,” he said, pointing to the bundle laid at the table.

 “Good.”

 “Stream-Rooted Willow.”

 “Excellent.”

 “Deep-Wood Elderberry.” He furrowed his brow.

 Ma shook her head, “Garden-Elderberry. See how big these are. Deep-Wood Elderberry is smaller.”

 Steve took one in his hand, turning it over. Even dried, it was bigger than the elderberries he sometimes collected in the wood for his Ma. He couldn’t quite believe that giving things such obvious names could help him in any way. He knew what an elderberry looked like, whether from the woods, or a garden, and they were always just elderberries.

 “Remember-” she said.

 “Always cook before using them. I know.”

 She smiled. “And?”

 “And with intent to heal,” he said by rote.

 “Good,” she tousled his hair. “That’s it for now. Go out and play with Bucky Barnes.”

  


People called them _SteveandBucky_ or _BuckyandSteve_ , and Bucky was glad for that.  Things had been boring before Steve decided to be friends with him, and it was nice to have somewhere to go when his Ma and Da were fighting, which was always. And Steve needed a lot of protecting. He never knew when to keep his mouth shut and would never walk away when he was outnumbered, no matter how many times Bucky told him to. It was exasperating, especially since Steve could barely hold himself up on a good day, let alone after a fight. Bucky liked having a job, and his job was protecting Steve Rogers.

 But the thing Bucky liked most about Steve - besides everything - was that he told spectacular stories and could draw them, too. A day with Steve was a day getting lost in a city- with hundreds of people, Buck. Could you imagine that many people? And buildings as tall as the oaks in the woods (not that they were ever allowed to go far into the woods). And then Steve would bring  the city to life using nothing but a piece of charred wood and the wall. Bucky could see the buildings and the streets, which looked a lot like the buildings and the streets of Brook, just bigger. He traced them with his hands, imagining a place that wasn’t Brook, or even Emmer. Maybe he had other parents in the city, parents who wouldn’t snipe and spit at each other, or sit in cold silence. Maybe there were doctors who could cure Steve in the city, and Steve would smile more, and stop going about all hunched into himself.

 But Steve wasn’t so sure. Steve told him about magic and sorcerers and a good and kind king whose very mind had been stolen by evil. “That’s why my Ma had to come to Brook,” he said. “It was too dangerous in the city.”

 Bucky asked Steve one day if he thought his Ma’s stories were true, and Steve paused, lifting his stick of charred wood from the half-finished drawing of the noble king, head bowed before the Sorcerer.

 “My Ma told me the stories, and I’ve never known her to lie. So they must be true.”

 Everyone knew that Steve’s Ma came from somewhere else; somewhere that wasn’t Brook. It seemed unfathomable to Bucky, despite Steve’s drawings. There wasn’t anywhere outside of Brook. Just forest. People talked about her. It wasn’t right, because she was always nice, and she always set him home with salves for his father’s callused hands. Still, Bucky was dubious about magic. He’d never seen any magic. The only magic in his life was Steve and his stories and his drawings. Maybe that’s what Steve’s Ma meant by magic anyway.

 Bucky laid down on Steve’s bed watching Steve draw. It was a pity that no one else could see how great Steve was. Like his Ma, he was routinely mocked by the boys in their class, and sometimes some of the girls. On the other hand, Bucky couldn’t imagine a life where they weren’t _SteveandBucky_ and _BuckyandSteve_. They were a brotherhood of two, and Bucky liked it that way.

 

They were 12 when Bucky’s Da left.

 Bucky was late meeting Steve at the corner of the orchard where they met every day that Bucky wasn’t helping his Da haul wood on to the wagon to be taken to Rose. Steve shifted from foot to foot. It wasn’t like Bucky to be late. Steve thought about leaving, but he didn’t relish the idea of going home to his chores. Then he began to worry that something was wrong. Bucky had told Steve not to come around to his house. His Da and Ma weren’t fighting, but they weren’t talking to each other either, and “it’s not fucking pleasant.” Steve knew that he always had a way of making things more tense somehow, and that he wouldn’t be a welcome addition to the Barnes house at the moment.

 On the other hand, if something was truly wrong, he should help.

 Then Bucky came around the bend, head bent, kicking up dust with his feet.

 “Bucky,” Steve called, jogging towards him.

 Bucky looked up. His pale face was set in a frown, the color on his cheeks a deep red against his livid white skin. His fists were clenched at his sides. Something was truly wrong. Steve broke into a run.

 “Bucky,” he said, grabbing Bucky’s shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

 “How many times do I have to tell you not to run, Rogers?” Bucky mumbled, pulling Steve along under the cover of the trees.

 Steve rolled his eyes. He pried Bucky’s hands off of his shirtsleeves. “What happened?” he asked again.

 “My Da-” Bucky began-

 “Rains,” Steve said, “what did he do this time?”

 Bucky looked away, his chest heaving.  For a moment Steve thought he was crying, but when Bucky turned back to look at him, his eyes were dry. “He’s leaving us. He has a whole nother family in Emmer. He’s had them for years. My Ma only found out because -” and then he stopped, shaking his head.

 “A whole other family? Like a wife and kids and a house and all that?”

 Bucky nodded.

 “Well, fuck.” He knew Bucky’s father traveled a lot, but he couldn’t imagine a whole other family of Barneses out in Emmer. Why would he do that? Bucky’s Ma was sometimes sharped-tongued, but she was a good woman, and Bucky and Becca and Charlie were good children despite inheriting their Ma’s sharp tongue. Bucky had not once complained about helping his Da with his work, or needing to watch Charlie when his Ma was busy.  “I can’t believe it. What are you going to do?”

 “I don’t know, Rogers,” Bucky said sharply.

 “Will you take over your Da’s work? Is he going to take Daisy? Who will do the hauling now?”

 “I said, I don’t know.”

 “You don’t need to snap,” Steve retorted, “I was just trying to help.”

 “And how do you think you’re helping? You’re no help.”

 Steve dug his heel into the ground, nose flaring. The problem with Bucky was that he knew all of Steve’s sore spots and Steve hated it. “Oh, quit complaining,” Steve said. “At least you know who your Da is, even if he is a liar and a swindler.”

 Bucky hit him.

 Bucky had never struck  him before, not with intent.

 "Fuck,” they both swore at the same time, Steve touching his bloody lip and Bucky shaking his hand out.  Bucky turned away, leaving Steve standing there, his chest heaving, and his breath hiccupping in his throat. He would not cry. He dared not cry.

 “Buck,” he said, bewildered. “You hit me.”

 Bucky spun back around, snarling. “I’ll do it again, Rogers, if you don’t go on and get away from me right now.”

 “But Buck-”

 “Now,” Bucky yelled, hands curling into fists.  The look in Bucky’s eyes was a terrible thing, and Steve couldn’t stand it, so he turned around and walked away.

 

“What happened?” his Ma asked when he walked in. “Where’s Bucky?”

 Steve hunched his shoulders and didn’t answer. He threw himself on his bed and buried his face in his pillow.

 “What happened? Ma asked again, sitting down next to him and running her hand through his hair. Steve looked up at her.

 “Did you know Bucky’s Da had another family?” he asked her.

 Ma frowned. “No,” she said, gently. “I knew-” she shook her head. “Ah, poor Winnie.”

 “Bucky’s being real twit about it too. At least he knew his father.”

 “Steven Grant, you did not say that,” Ma exclaimed in horror. Steve could only nod, and then he was being grabbed by the ear and pulled up into sitting position. “You go and apologize to Bucky right now. I cannot believe my son would say something so cruel.  Your very best friend is in pain, and that’s how you treat him?”

 “But it’s true,” he insisted.

 “Now.” Ma pushed him towards the door. “You’re not to come back until you’ve set this right, Steven.”

 Steve stumbled to the door. “It’s not fair,” he protested.

 Ma’s eyes flashed, as she grabbed his arm. “You listen to me, and you listen to me well, Steven Grant,” she said. “Kindness is never a matter of fair. And just who do you think you are that you are arbiter of which pain is greater than another? Ah, Joseph,” she scrubbed at her face, “how have I raised a son like this?”

 For the second time that day, Steve fled.

 It was full night by the time Steve convinced himself to knock on the Barnses’ door. He had spent an hour walking around in a rage, justifying himself to himself, hearing his mother’s words echoing in his brain, until he could justify himself no longer.

 Bucky’s mother opened the door, looking tired and distracted. “Hello, Mistress Barnes,” Steve said, and then swallowed. He didn’t want to remind her of her husband. Bucky’s mother glanced down.

 “Oh, hello Steve.”

 “Is Bucky here?”

 Her brow furrowed. “I think so? He must have come in. Was he at supper? I don’t know-” her voice trailed off and she stared out into the dark street. Steve slipped by her into the house. Becca stood near the table, still laid with dishes, food crusting over, glaring.

 “Is Bucky here?” he asked again.

 “Why should I tell you?”

 “Because-just can you tell me, Becca?”

 Becca scowled and pointed up. The attic then.  Steve felt his way up to the Barnses’s attic. Only Bucky and he went up there, for in the winter it was unbearably cold and in the summer it was unbearably hot. It mostly served for storage.

 “Bucky.”  By the dim light of a lantern, he could see the shape of his friend sprawled on his stomach on the floor. Bucky turned over and looked at him.

 “Steve.”

 “Bucky,” Steve said again around the lump in his throat, “Bucky.” Shamefully he started to cry. “I’m so sorry, Bucky. It was so terrible, what I said. I’m so sorry. Bucky.”

 Bucky scrambled to his feet. To Steve’s great horror, he saw that Bucky was crying too. “Steve.”

 “Please forgive me, Bucky. I’ll understand if you never want to talk to me again, but forgive me. I don’t- I couldn’t stand it if you didn’t forgive me.”

 Steve took as step back as Bucky lurched forward, and then Bucky’s arms were around him, pulling him in close. “I forgive you,” Bucky said into his neck. “I forgive you.”

 Eventually they slid to the floor, and sat down against one of the chests of winter quilts. Steve rested his head on Bucky’s shoulder. “Tell me what it’s like not having a Da,” Bucky said quietly.

 “It’s-” Steve thought about it. “You get on. I mean, I haven’t known anything else, so I guess I’m luckier than you, but I hate my Da sometimes- for dying, for making my Ma so sad. So it’s alright if you hate your Da. He’s a real dungheap.”

 Bucky laughed hoarsely. “I do hate my Da.”

 “But also,” Steve continued, “sometimes I really love him- well, not love him, you can’t love someone you never met- but I guess I admire him. My Ma always says that he was special, and she loved him a lot, so I guess he was special,” Steve shrugged.

 “There’s still no one who knows horses like my Da does,” Bucky lowered his head, “and I don’t want to admire him for that, or think that I love him, but then I think about the way he taught me to saddle old Daisy  and I think, well maybe he loved us anyway, and maybe he’s coming back, but he’s not.”

 Steve squeezed his hand. “Well, fuck him. He’s lost out on you and Becca and Charlie and your Ma, and you all are five hundred times better than him or his new family.”

 Bucky squeezed back, then wriggled to the ground pulling Steve with him.  Steve was ensconced in the crook of Bucky’s arm, his head laying on Bucky’s shoulder. Steve could feel the heat of him under the rough material of his shirt. The scent of his sweat was familiar, grounding. They were too old for this, but Steve didn’t care. “Nothing is going to be the same again, is it?” His mouth moved damply against Bucky’s shirt.

 Bucky shook his head, his fingers tightening into the back of Steve’s  own shirt.

 “I am really sorry, Bucky.”

 “I know,” Bucky said. “But hey,” he untangled himself from Steve, pushing himself on one elbow, so he was looking Steve in the face, “you know this is not the end, right? No matter what, I’m with you.”

 Steve swallowed. “Yes,” he whispered, “I know that. I don’t know why you put up with me, but I’m really glad you do.” He twisted around, trying to get comfortable on the floor. “Do you think your Ma will let me stay the night?”

 “I think my Ma couldn’t see an ox in front of her nose right now,” Bucky snorted. “Just stay here. It’s too late to go back to yours now anyway.”

 Bucky leaned over and blew out the lantern. Steve settled and started a little when Bucky curled himself into Steve’s body, sighing. Steve tentatively put his hand at the back of Bucky’s neck, and then held it there, fingers curling into the short, sweaty hair at the back of his neck. Bucky sighed again, and then they slept.

  


The fight began for no reason whatsoever and every reason there was. The apples trees had ripened and as many people as could be spared were out in the orchards helping with the harvest. Steve liked this time of year, liked scrambling his twiggy body up the apple trees and shaking- in this at least he had an advantage over the other boys his age- the branches wouldn’t snap beneath his weight. It also gave him the advantage of height, which he generally didn’t have and now used liberally.

 Rye had called Bucky’s Ma pathetic earlier in the year, and Steve had never forgot it, and even though he had punched Rye then, he still felt the sting of it. So when Rye passed under Steve’s tree, he couldn’t quite help himself - he braced himself against the trunk, grabbed the nearest branch and shook. The apples fell like hail on Rye’s head. He yelped, looking up, and then lunged for the tree trunk and did his own shaking.

 Steve clung to the branch, grinning, despite the sting of the rough bark as it slid through his hands.

 “You’re an ass,” Rye yelled up at him.

 “You’re so thick headed we could use your skull as an apple press,” Steve yelled back.  Rye gave the tree trunk a vigorous shake. Steve slid down the trunk, stopping himself just before he got rammed in the balls by a branch.

 Now Will and Lo came running, scooping up apples as the ran and launching them up at Steve. Most of them went straight through the foliage, or hit a branch and went tumbling down to the ground harmlessly, but a few hit their target.

 “Hey,” Steve grunted, and instinctually lifted his arms over his head to protect himself. Rye gave the tree another shake, and this time Steve could not keep his balance. Down he went, branches cracking underneath him as he fell. Somehow he managed to turn in the air, but when he hit the ground, bottom first, it still knocked all the air out of him. Everything went black for a moment, and when he opened his eyes, Rye and Will and Lo were standing above him, triumphant leers on their faces.

 Steve groaned, turning his head. He recognized the pair of boots approaching. He recognized the gait- not a run, or a trot, but a strutting stroll. Though his face hurt, though everything hurt he smiled.  

 Bucky - tall and broad shouldered, turning heads as he passed.  Bucky- smelling of fermentation, covered in flour, probably just off his shift at Henry’s. His Bucky.

 “What’s this?” Bucky asked, and then raised his fists.

 There were things about Bucky that only Steve knew; things he hoarded away and kept close - the way Bucky was grumpy in the mornings when no one was looking, the snide and cynical turn of his lips, the deep well of anger that he had buried inside himself when his Da left.

 He knew him in a fight- all blunt force and no grace. He knew the sound of his knuckles hitting bone; his grunts and  exclamations. But more than that, Steve knew how to move with him. Bucky set his shoulders and Steve rolled and grabbed at the nearest ankle that wasn’t Bucky’s and bit down. Will screamed, and went tumbling to the ground under the force of Bucky’s blows. Steve pushed himself to his feet, and Bucky caught his eye, grinning.

 Steve knew Bucky in the stables talking softly to the horses as he passed their stalls, a carrot for each. He knew Bucky half asleep on the river bank, eyes closed, breathing deep, his muscled arms flung over his eyes to keep the light out- grass and straw in his dark hair, little yellow flowers framing his body.

 And Steve knew Bucky this way, bloody and triumphant, shoulder to shoulder, panting, and half laughing.

 “What was that all about?” he asked when he had caught his breath.

 Steve took one more moment to catch his own. Bucky wouldn’t let him hear the end of it if he were wheezing. “Still haven’t forgiven him for what he said about your Ma,” he said finally.

 Bucky slapped him on the back. “you’re too good to me, Steve,” he said.

 Steve shrugged. “Let’s go before Master Roche gets here. I’m going to catch a yelling from my Ma in any case, I don’t want to get one from him as well. You know how he is about ‘our comportment in the orchards during the harvest,’”, he mimicked.

 Bucky nodded, slowing his stride so he could walk with Steve. He reached into his pocket, frowning. “I brought you a cake leftover, but I think it’s nothing but crumbs now.” Indeed he pulled out a fistful of crumbs. “I’ll bring you another one tomorrow.”

 Steve opened his scraped hands. “Give it here anyway, crumbs still taste pretty good.”

 

He had nimble hands, but a poor body- that’s what Ash had said when he came to drop off the mending. That at least, Steve could do from bed, even if he couldn’t help with the tailoring at Ash’s shop. Ash had hired him for his fingers and his ability to make any piece of clothing both more beautiful and more durable. Though he claimed that the people of Brook didn’t care much for beauty, Steve knew that a small piece of embroidery could make an old garment look new, and that most people relished having something new. And in any case, he liked making things more beautiful.

 His body betrayed him, though, as it seemed to do at every point in his life. He had tried to explain to Bucky once, what it was like living with a body that would inevitably fail you, and Bucky had said, “It’s like knowing there’s a trap going to be sprung at any moment, or at least that’s what it feels like to me- one day you’re well, and the next you’re ill and I never know which day is going to be which.”

 But Steve shook his head at that. It wasn’t like that at all, even if he didn’t quite have the words to describe it to Bucky. There was never a day in his life that he didn’t feel his body. On good days, he woke with tightness in his head, an ache in his shoulders and stiffness in his back. And though his headache would abate some over the course of the day, it would never truly disappear and eventually his joints would start hurting as well. He had learned long ago how to ignore his body- how to gather all the pain and ache into himself; how to subsume it so that it was nothing more than a sensation- something to fuel him.

 The betrayal was when the fuel ran out- when the ache became too much,  and the headache a fever. When the pains in his joints became a shuddering chill up and down his weak bones. He was down to nothing but embers and fever dreams. That was the betrayal.

 Steve lived among hearty folk; men and women with strong bones and steady constitutions. He knew that he was not expected to live long. He knew they considered him a burden that they would bear for however many  the years he had out of love for his mother, probably. That too, was a betrayal.

 So he sewed diligently. Even when he could barely curl his fingers for the pain; even when he couldn’t open his eyes, he sewed. He sewed by feel alone or pulling the needle through with his teeth when his hands couldn’t. Let him be useful. Let him have worth to the people around him, who he loved and hated despite himself. And when he died, let them not say, oh, it’s a pity, but now we are unburdened, let them say, oh, but he made our lives more beautiful.

 

Old magic is its own and nobody quite has an understanding of it, or so Sara had been taught those many years ago. It does as it will. Sara thought that the truth of it was more complicated. Surely there was an order- a system - it was only that her teachers didn’t know what it was, or perhaps, more likely, were too confident in their own power to truly look for it. Whatever the case, the barrier was weakening, and so was Sara.

 Her death came like a killing vine, creeping its way up to her heart and her lungs, and what was outside of Brook, the many years of evil rule, came slithering into cracks in the barrier, hastening its fall. Oh, the people of Brook would not begin to notice it for months, maybe even years. But the harvest was just a bit scarce, and the rain came all at once or not at all. Josiah the Blacksmith broke his arm, and Lucy Offen lost two pregnancies in a row. It was coming. It was coming, and these three little villages that had sheltered her for so long had no idea how bad matters could get, and how swiftly.

 Abraham knew about the barrier as well, but when she asked him about it, he just bowed his head. “I don’t know, Sara. I don’t know.”

 She hadn’t told him she was dying yet, but she thought maybe he knew just as he had known that she was pregnant seventeen years earlier.   He was a lot softer with her now, when once he had pushed her hard to learn, thinking that she would be the one to take over his work when he was gone. Or maybe it was that they were both growing old; that they both felt a chill of despair and were very afraid.

 She hoped she would be alive to see her son through, at the least, but she doubted she would be. She didn’t know how to protect him and cursed herself for being lax and for relying on magic she didn’t understand to keep him safe. Steve was brave and foolhardy and had a keen sense of justice. Any mother would be proud to have a son like him. But he was also naive and impetuous and stubborn. Often, the only thing holding him back from getting into real trouble was Bucky Barnes. So Sara set her thoughts on her son, hoping she could wish a better world into being for him, hoping that he would be strong enough to survive - no, to fight - what was coming. And she set her thoughts on Bucky Barnes, hoping he too, would be strong, and hoping that he would never falter, and never leave Steve’s side.

 

Master Toby the Innkeeper had never thought to wonder where his ale came from. He had casks in the cellar and they served well. He was too busy to truly worry about what was for the most part out of sight. But it was come winter and he could not sleep thinking of his storehouses and the coming cold. He would need a good more store of flour - and ale- he wasn’t sure how many casks he had left. He hadn’t taken inventory in a long while. Tomorrow he would begin in the cellar and then move up to the larder, though knowing Elfre, she had it in hand. Still, he should send the Minner boy across the river to-

 He sat up in bed. Across the river to- He used to order ale from somewhere. They used to cross the river, and sometimes barges would come through loaded with live-stock and dry goods. There used to be-

 “What?” his wife grumbled as he shook her awake.

 “Elfre, Elfre-” she sat up straight in bed, for Toby almost never called her by her first name.  

 “Who did we order ale from? We used to order ale from somewhere.”

 Elfre sank back under the covers. “For rains’ sake, Toby, that’s what you woke me for? We have another ten casks in the cellar. Why would you worry about that now in the middle of the night? Am I just going to conjure up more casks from my bed? Go back to sleep man.”

 But the innkeeper could not sleep. His thoughts went round and round. It was as if he had a word in his mouth, but was not able to form it on his tongue. He was sure there was a town across the river and at the same time he was certain there had never been a town across the river.

 Toby stood up, went down to the common room and poured himself his own glass of ale. When he woke in the morning, upper body still slung over the bar where he had fallen asleep, he was confused, aching and bleary eyed, but on his life, he could not remember what had kept him up the night before.

 That very same night, Steve woke up to the sound of his mother coughing. He got of bed, hissing as his feet touched the cold floor. “Ma?” he called. She didn’t answer, but neither did she stop coughing. He crept out of his room and into hers. His mother was balled up on her bed, shaking with cold. “Ma!” he cried.

 “It’s nothing,” she waved him away. He rushed over to her and put a hand on her forehead. She was burning up.

 “Nothing? You’ve got a fever, Ma.”

 Steve had had many a fever in his life.  He stoked the dying embers at the hearth and laid a bit more wood to get a fire going. They couldn’t really afford it, but he wasn’t going to let his Ma freeze. Then he went to his own bed and grabbed his quilt. The continued sound of persistent, deep coughing urged him on. Ma muttered her thanks as he laid his quilt over her body.  He smoothed her sweaty hair off of her forehead.

 “Sage, garlic, and some vinegar, right?” he asked, and she nodded. He mixed the ingredients carefully and added some honey for sweetness though his Ma had asked for none. He knew from experience that it made the tonic go down easier.

 Ma took it with trembling hands, closing her eyes as she took a sip. “You go back to bed now,” she said.

 Steve shook his head. “You’re freezing, Ma. I’m gettin in with you.”

 “Steve,” Ma muttered in disapproval.

 Steve lifted the covers and slipped into the bed with his mother. “It’s my turn now,” he said, though he had never seen his Ma ill before, though he was indeed somewhat alarmed, and feeling out of his depth. “Now, I take care of you.”

  


It was a long illness that took his Ma. Her fever lingered, waxing and waning. She lost her color and Steve thought he could hear her bones rattle every time she coughed. Dr. Erskine frowned when he first saw her, and brought elixirs and tonics for her to drink and ointments that smelled sharp and piney to be rubbed on her chest. As the month wore on though, Steve began to understand that Dr. Erskine was not offering a cure, but only a way to make her more comfortable as she faded away. He would not meet Steve’s eyes when Steve asked him why his mother was not improving after all they were doing for her.

 She slept most of the time now, which was a relief in its because it meant at least that she was not in pain. Steve spent his days and nights by her side. Were it not for Dr. Erskine and Bucky and his family he would probably have starved out of distraction and the need to track his mother’s every labored breath.

 “Steve.” His Ma woke, and for the first time in days, she seemed lucid. Steve fumbled for her hand.

 “What is it, Ma?” he had to bend down to hear her, for her voice was so weak.

 "There’s one more thing about Names that I have to tell you.”

 “Is that really what you want to talk about now?” She was dying, and she wanted to talk about his childhood lessons?

 Her grasp on his hand was surprisingly painful. “It’s important, Steven.”

 “Alright, Ma. What is it?”

 “People, all people, have True Names too. It’s not really the way I taught you, just herbs. They’re powerful things, True Names for people, but nobody has just one True Name. It’s different, sometimes. In relation to other people.”

 “I don’t. I don’t understand you, Ma. You’re not making sense.”

 She shook her head. “It’s important,” she said again. “The True Name I call you is not the same one Bucky would call you, or Dr. Erskine, because you are different to us.”

 “How would Bucky know my True Name?”

 “He doesn’t. I don’t know. Maybe he does. But you should know. You should know because it is a powerful thing knowing a True Name.”

 “How do you come to know it?”

 “You just know, sometimes. Sometimes you have to learn it, but sometimes you just know.”

 “That’s not very helpful, Ma,” he said gently, though it irked him that she was spending what little strength she had left on this nonsense. He had so much more he wanted to know, he realized. So many more things he needed to ask her before she went.

 She smiled, choking out a laugh. “Oh, Steve. You’re always poking at things with sticks.”

 He laughed too. “I guess I am, Ma. I know I caused you a lot of worry. I’m sorry.”

 “I have been proud of you from the moment you were born,” she said, “I love you.”

 “I love you, too, Ma,” Steve replied, but she had slipped back into sleep.

  
  


Dr. Abraham Erskine had a choice to make. He didn’t know what it was about Sara’s death that hastened the fall of the barrier surrounding Brook, Rose and Emmer. It seemed that he had effortlessly held it up before she came, and all the more so after she came. But now that she was dead it seemed to slip away from him. Old magic will do as it will. Never had he been so sharply reminded of that old adage.

 So now he had a choice. He could protect the towns, or he could protect the boy. Many lives at the expense of one life, or one extraordinary life at the expense of many.

 “Well?” he asked the cat, who was sitting on his papers licking his paw. The cat did not answer. He just hopped down off the table and then hopped right out the open window.

 Abraham sighed. Oh, how he missed Sara- missed hearing her voice floating down from the open window above the workshop. At this time of night she would be berating Steve to go to sleep, though he was a grown boy, and closing the shutters with a sigh.

He picked up the gift that Sara had left in his keeping for Steve. No, it wasn’t a gift- it was an inheritance. She had been so uneasy about the whole thing, but he had told her not to worry. “You are a mother who knows her son’s Name as it Truly is. That’s all you need, that and love, which you have in abundance.”

 She had nodded, and now, turning it over in his hands he could tell that she had put all her love and worry and hopes and fears for Steve into it - everything he was to her, and everything she hoped he would become was contained in this one small, delicate object.

 Abraham wrapped the gift back in the soft cloth it had been stored in and placed it in his lockbox. The hope was that Steve would never need it, but he was beginning to realize that maybe it was a false hope.

 He had a choice to make and he didn’t want to make it.

  


“Steve.” Bucky stood at the doorway.

 “What are you doing here?” Steve asked, making an effort to sit up at least.

 “What am I doing here?” Bucky strode in, grabbing the bottle from Steve’s hand, and spilling the ale out the window in one smooth motion.

“I was drinking that!”

 “Well, now you aren’t. Why do you think I’m here, Steve?”

 “Because you’re an ass?”

 Bucky rolled his eyes. “Because I haven’t seen my best friend in over a week, because you reek like a dungheap,  and because you are sitting here uselessly getting drunk.”

 Steve stood up, shakily. “I am not,” he jabbed a finger in the general direction of Bucky’s face, “I am not useless.”

 “You’re certainly acting like you’re useless.”

 “You shut your mouth.”

 Bucky grabbed Steve around his waist. Steve yelled and kicked ineffectually. “What are you doing?” Bucky didn’t answer. Instead Steve found himself being dragged out of the house down the stairs and into the street. Steve dug his heels into the ground and bit down on Bucky’s bicep. Bucky yelped but didn’t let go. He dragged him down the street, over the cobbled stone of the town square, and out to the channel at the end of the orchard. He threw Steve into the water.

 Steve sputtered and flailed. Cold muddy water filled his boots, streamed down his back and hair. He stumbled to his feet and then stumbled right back down. “Fuck you!” He yelled at Bucky.

 Bucky just sat on the channel bank, grinning. “Feel better?”

 “No. No I do not feel better. I feel wet and cold. What did you think, throwing me in the river would just magically make my Ma not dead?”

 “I thought at least it would sober you up.” Bucky snapped.

 “I can drink if I want to.”

 “Sure you can, but drinking isn’t mourning-it’s just wallowing. You want to drink, drink, but don’t dishonor your Ma by fooling  yourself into thinking you’re doing it for her.”

 “Fuck you,” Steve said again.

 “Real articulate, Stevie.” Bucky stood up and started to walk away. “Get yourself cleaned up, Rogers. My Ma slaughtered a hen and you’re expected for dinner. Also,” he called over his shoulder, “I’m moving in to your place tomorrow.”

As he promised, the next morning Bucky darkened Steve’s doorway before the sun had well and truly risen. Steve woke up to Bucky’s face peering down at him in the grey light. His head throbbed and his mouth was dry. “I hate you,” he croaked.

 “Good to know,” Bucky said. “You don’t have to get up, but I just want you to know that the sack in the - other room is full of my things. Don’t touch it.”

 “I don’t want your things.” Steve mumbled and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Bucky was gone and thin winter light streamed into his bedroom. “Fuck,” he said.

 He rolled himself out of bed and immediately dunked his head in the water basin. The water was freezing.  Now he was awake.

 Indeed, Bucky had left a bag of his possessions near the hearth. Steve had half a mind to just throw the whole sack out the window, but he knew that Bucky would never forgive him if his good shirt got ruined.

 Instead he sat down at the small, rickety table he had been sitting at for his whole life- the same table he had been drinking at for the past week. Dishonoring his mother as Bucky had said. And then, for the first time since her death, he put his head in his hands and wept.

 Bucky found him that evening sitting in front of his Ma’s wood chest, staring down at its meager contents. Ma hadn’t had much she’d deemed worth preserving for herself - Steve’s baby blanket, a few of his drawings, and one nice dress. Everything else in the chest was practical - a heavy quilt, a tablecloth, a few scraps of lace she had been saving for curtains. He picked up the dress and held up it in front of him.

 “You should give this to Becca,” he said, “it might fit her with some tailoring.”

 “Steve,” Bucky laid a hand on his shoulder and then knelt down next to him, “you don’t have to do this right now.”

 “You need place for your things,” Steve said.

 “There’s plenty of space in there,” Bucky replied.

 Steve let out a long breath, then shook his head. “No,” he said, “I  want to do it now. There’s no use in having these things just sitting here, languishing. I certainly don’t have use for them.” He carefully lifted out the dress, tablecloth and lace. “You’ll bring them to your Ma? I’m sure she could use them.”

 “I’ll do that tomorrow.”

 “You tell Becca that I can tailor that dress if she needs it.”

 “I will.” Bucky pulled himself to his feet, and held out a hand to help Steve do the same.

 

Living with Bucky was not what Steve had expected, though the truth was he hadn’t had enough time to think about it to expect much. But if he had had the time, he would not have expected what was the truth-  Bucky was terrible to live with.

 First of all, it was not that he was merely grumpy in the mornings. No,  on the few mornings he was not at Henry’s he was nearly unbearable- snapping and grunting at Steve, complaining about any noise he made. “It’s too early for your ruckus,” he would yell, and Steve, who had only been removing the crock of butter from the larder, contemplated taking Bucky’s eye out with his sewing needle.

 Secondly, he was nothing but a mess. He tracked flour and mud everywhere. It got into the floorboards, and stained the linens, and all of Steve’s clothes. Bucky seemed oblivious, even when Steve suggested to him that perhaps he should remove his boots before coming into the house. Bucky had just looked at him blankly. “And walk around in my stockings getting my feet all cold? Why would I do that?”

 So it was Steve who gathered up the linens baring mud-stains and filth and other stains he didn’t want to think about, and he gathered up Bucky’s good shirt, too, along with his second pair of trousers to be lugged to Mistress  Beadle and her girls for laundering. And it was Steve who scrubbed the floors and the stone countertop, muttering curses at Bucky under his breath.

 And finally, Bucky was needy. He was always wanting to be in Steve’s company and to know what Steve was doing. He reminded Steve of Dr. Erskine’s cat- who was the most demanding cat he had ever met - prone to jumping on any lap and just staying there, or twining his way through his victim’s legs butting his head against their shins until they relented and picked him up. Bucky was always touching him, throwing his arms over his shoulders, or just stepping close into his space and staying there.  

 It would not have bothered Steve so much, were he not still mourning his mother. It was the lack of her that hovered over everything in the house. The hearth. The larder. His small room, and hers. The broom in the corner. They all stood exactly as they had when his mother lived, only now covered in a sheen of dust and flour. Steve kept on catching a glimpse of her out of the  corner of his eye, but it was only Bucky and it brought his grief welling to the surface anew.

 And it would not have been so difficult if it wasn’t so obvious that Bucky was trying so hard to make up for the lack of Steve’s mother with his false cheeriness and dogged closeness. Steve wanted none of that. What he wanted from Bucky was his sharpness, his anger - he wanted to see in him a reflection of what Steve felt inside- a dullness that coalesced into hooks and needles of anger and pain. But Bucky refused to give him that. Steve felt it wearying beyond belief.

 But one day Bucky said, as Steve was furiously beating the curtains, coughing as clouds of dust bloomed into his face, “You know, I miss her, too.”

 Steve coughed again, choking. “What?”

 “Your Ma. I miss her too. She was important to me. So I know it’s hard. I’m not just doing this for you.” He shrugged, “I miss her, too.”

 Steve stepped away from the his task. “Thank you, Buck,” he said, and he put his arms around Bucky drawing him into a hug. Bucky sighed, and Steve laid his head on his shoulder. “I don’t say that enough, thank you.”

 “You’re welcome. Now let go of me, you’re getting dust all over everything. I think you’re doing this wrong.”

 Steve took a step back, glaring.“I’m doing this wrong? Now who’s the one who comes in tramping mud and all sorts of everything into this house every day? It isn’t me, Bucky.”

 Bucky threw back his head and laughed as Steve rounded on him, yanking the curtain down off the window with a loud rip - he would have to mend that later - and dumping it over Bucky’s head, dust and mud and spiders and everything.

 Things were better after that. Bucky went out more- to the pub or courting or both, and also started helping more. Steve, for his part, tried very hard to stop seeing his mother, and start seeing Bucky.

“Tell me something,” Steve said one evening. Steve was sitting near the hearth, working on the large pile of mending for Ash he had been neglecting all week. Bucky was sitting by the table, half-staring at Steve, thinking, as Bucky so often did these days. Steve didn’t know what was on his mind, but for some reason also felt reluctant to ask him. Something was happening to Bucky - some internal shift. Steve hoped Bucky would tell him when he finally understood himself enough to explain himself.  It wouldn’t end well if he asked him about it now. “Tell me something,” he said again, “some news, something I’ve missed over the past while.”

 Bucky stirred. “There’s a King in Istaban,” he said, as simply as if that had always been the truth.

 “Excuse me?”

 “Lo told me that he had spoken to Jack in Rose, and Jack had told him that a stranger came through Emmer the other week, and lodged at the Trout. He told them that there was a King in Istaban.”

 “Nobody comes through Emmer,” Steve protested, “ and why would they go to the Trout? Everyone knows Master Toby’s food is better.”

 Bucky shrugged. “I’m just telling you what I heard - there’s a King.”

 "And was his mind taken captive by an evil sorcerer?” Steve sneered. “Don’t mock me, Bucky.”

 Bucky looked at him sharply, but his voice was calm. “Actually, yes. He was. According to Jack, he has now broken with his former advisor, and moves to unseat him. The counselor, Pierce, has a following though, and has declared the King unfit for the throne. There will be war soon, civil war.”

 “You are serious.”

 Bucky nodded. “Yes.”

 Yes, now Steve remembered- though it was the first time he had the thought in his whole life -there was a King in Istaban, the capital far across the river. They had learned about him in school.  Steve shuddered with excitement or fear, he wasn’t sure. “Do you think the war will reach us? Do you think the King will come here?”

 “I don’t know,” Bucky said softly. “I don’t know.”

  


The war came to Brook at the harvest, but the King didn’t come at all. His Captain came in his stead, came riding into the town with a whole regiment of soldiers, all of them dressed in blue wool against the cold, the metal of their weapons glinting in the sunlight, their horses tall and deep-chested, saddled in finery.

 Steve heard Cather Minner sigh behind him. It was so crowded she was practically pushed against his back. “Look at those horses,” she said to whoever was standing next to her, though Steve thought that when she said horses she probably meant men. Brook had never seen soldiers before. He took a small step forward, and pulled his shoulders back to stand a bit taller.

 One of the soldiers whistled sharply. The crowd fell silent. The Captain turned his tall warhorse towards the gathering of people.

 “People of Brook,” he called. “War has come and I have a message from the King.” He unfurled a piece of parchment and read. “ _My Subjects, some of you may know that for these last years I have not been myself. I have been in a sense a prisoner of my own mind, my will hijacked by Counselor Pierce. I have done things that go against greater sensibility, but more than that, I have done evil. Though my actions were not my of own will, I still bear responsibility for them, and I must beg your forgiveness.”_

  _"And now, my friends, those who love freedom, I must ask for your help. Counselor Pierce has become strong- too strong for my army to contend with alone - but he must be stopped for the sake of us all. I ask you for too much, I ask you for your sons and your husbands and your loved ones. Every able-bodied man under the age of 40, is asked to come and to fight for us all. I have felt the evil and cruelty that Counselor Pierce is capable of on my very own flesh. He must not be allowed to be victorious, for all our sakes._

  _I thank you, dear Subjects and Friends. May we all see peace and justice in our days_.”

 The square was frozen in pure silence, until it wasn’t. Then the cacaphony of voices like flooding water.  Steve was shoved forward and yanked back. Someone’s elbow dug into his spine. He pulled himself on tiptoes, trying to find Bucky. They would go together. There was no way  Bucky would not do his duty, and there was no way Steve wasn’t going to fight. Neither of them would be fighting alone, at least.

 The Captain raised his hand. “Friends,” he yelled over the din. “Go back to your homes now. In an hour we will go house by house, and give you men your orders.”

 There was again a shocked murmur. But one by one, family by family, the people of Brook turned around and went back to their homes. Steve saw Becca out of the corner of his eye and threaded his way through the crowd to get to her. She would know where Bucky was.  A hand caught his arm before he got to her. He looked up, and it was Bucky, gazing down at him with a somberly.

 “Come along,” Bucky said, “let’s go home like the nice Captain told us to.”

 “You aren’t going to your Ma’s?”

 “Why would I go to my Ma’s? I live with you. Let’s go.”

 They walked side by side through the shocked streets of their hometown. “I’m glad we’ll be together, Buck,” Steve said.

 Bucky glanced at him and then quickly away. “Do you really think we’ll be together?”

 “Why not? We’re enlisting together.”

 Bucky’s fingers brushed the inside of Steve’s wrist- just a moth wing of a touch. His mouth quirked, but he wasn’t smiling. “If you say so, Stevie. Yes, it will be good.”

 At home, Steve didn’t know what to do. Would  they leave right away? Should he assemble a pack? Who would care for the house while they were gone- Dr. Erskine, he supposed. The Doctor was too old to fight.

 He started to sweep the floor, if only to have something to do.

 “What are you doing, Steve?” Bucky asked. “We’re having soldiers over, not company.”

 Steve paused, chin resting on the broom handle. “I don’t know. I couldn’t think of what to do, and I need to do something-” he resumed sweeping with fervor.

 “Stop, just stop.” Bucky coughed. “You’re kicking up dust. Let’s just, let’s just sit down, alright? We don’t know what’s going to happen so let’s sit down.”

 Steve fell into the kitchen chair, the broom clattering to the floor. “Should we pack bags?”

 Bucky sighed and ran his hands through his hair. His face was haggard. He was frightened.

 “Buck.” Steve touched his hand. “It’s going to be alright. We’ll be together.”

 Bucky gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, Steve, I really hope so. Rains,” he said, placing his head on the table, “I’m not made to be a soldier.”

 “What do you mean? You’re as tough as anyone in Brook.” Bucky didn’t answer. “Buck?”

 They were interrupted by a pounding knock at the door. Bucky looked at Steve. Steve looked at Bucky. Neither of them moved. The door rattled. Bucky sighed and got up to let the soldiers in.

 They had sent two men, both tall and straight-backed - military men- not recruits. They offered no words of greeting, only stood, feet planted steady and apart, eyes keen and roving over Bucky and Steve both.

 “Name?” the sandy haired one barked.

 “Steve Rogers, sir.”

 “Not you,” he snorted, “him.”

 “Bu-James Barnes, sir.”

 “You know your weapons, Barnes?”

 “No, sir. I know the bow, but for hunting, not-”

 “No one in this winter-ass town knows their weapons,” the other soldier muttered under his breath.

 Steve glared at him. “For rain’s sake,” he burst out, “why would we ever need to know our weapons?”

 “Steve-” Bucky said.

 “You talk strange, too.” The soldier was nonplussed by Steve’s outburst.

 “Hodges,” the sandy-haired one warned, “enough.” He nodded at Bucky. “You’ll be with the 107th. Report in one hour before sunrise where the Eieweiss meets the road a mile before the bridge.”

 “The Eieweiss?” Bucky asked just as Steve said, with some alarm, “The bridge?”

 Both soldiers sighed in unison. Apparently they weren’t the first men to be confused by their directions. “Where the river meets the road. An hour before sunrise.”

 Bucky nodded and they moved to leave. “Wait,” Steve said, “what about me?”

 The sandy-haired one, the one in charge, eyed Steve up and down. “Son,” he said, “you look half-dead already. We don’t need you. Consider yourself lucky.”

 “No,” Steve stepped forward, fists clenched. “No. I want to fight. You have to let me fight. You can’t let him go alone. Where he goes, I go.”

 “Steve,” Bucky said weakly behind him, pulling him back, “Steve. Leave it. That’s enough. Just leave it.”

 Steve whirled around to face Bucky. “No,” he said again, “Buck-”

 The soldier in charge cleared his throat. “Consider yourself lucky,” he said again, and then with a hint of amusement, “I’ll leave you to your lover’s quarrel.”

 “We’re not-” Bucky started to say, but the soldiers were already out the door.

 “I can’t believe you took their side,” Steve advanced on Bucky. “I can’t believe you don’t think I’m fit to fight.”

 “Steve,” Bucky said, “Steve,” he said louder, “Steve,” he yelled, “will you fucking let me talk?” Steve shut his mouth. “Listen,” Bucky said. “You and I both know you would make a great soldier. You’re nothing but fight, but they don’t- and maybe they are right- maybe it’s better this way. I’d much rather go to war knowing you’re safe and sound in Brook, then dying on the front with me.”

 “You will not fucking die.”

 Bucky shrugged. “I might. It’s likely. I don’t want you to die either.”

 “That’s not- you can’t-” Steve didn’t know how to continue. The prospect of Bucky’s death was an endless thing in his stomach. It had no words to it. It was like the moment before a scream, the deep unease of everything rising in his gullet, food and words and pain.

 “Steve,” Bucky said gently, “I don’t want to fight with you. Let’s just - let’s go to my Ma’s tonight. Alright?”

  


So they went to his Ma’s that night and laid down in the attic where they had spent so much of their childhood. Bucky knew he would not sleep- who could sleep on a night like this? He was certain that every man called to war was awake this night. Even Steve, who was not off to war, was awake, though with his back turned to Bucky, he was pretending he was not.

 Bucky took the opportunity to look his fill. He wished Steve had done some self-portraits so that he could take one with him. He would fold the precious paper so carefully and wear it against his chest as a talisman. If there was any power that could protect him it would be whatever sheer stubborn will of Steve Rogers resided in a drawing that existed only in his imagination.

 So now he looked. Steve was a lot stronger than he let on, and Bucky took in the wiry muscles in his back, his tapered waist that helped to emphasize his rounded buttocks and thin, strong legs. Bucky wanted to touch. He wanted to run his fingers over the curve of Steve’s waist, to press his lips against the hot skin at the crook of his neck. He wanted to turn him over and press him down against the floorboards with his wanting body. He wanted to see Steve’s face in desire and abandon as he had never seen Steve’s face before. But he was coward, and even off to war, he could not.

 Steve stirred in the middle of the night. “You don’t have to do this,” he said  

 “I know, but I’m not going to stand around while every other family in this town loses a child.”

 “I know.”

 “Listen, my Ma always said that there was bridge across the river. You could only see it sometimes. Or maybe only certain people could see it. I don’t know. But she told me never to cross that bridge.”

 Bucky sighed. Mostly he thought Ma Rogers’s stories were just stories, but now- now there was a King, now there was a world beyond Brook and Rose and Emmer, so he couldn’t discount Ma Rogers’s stories anymore.

 Steve took his hand. “Please,” he said. “Please don’t cross that bridge.”

 Bucky didn’t know what to say or how to make it better, so he gathered his courage, leaned over and kissed Steve.

 “Oh,” Steve said, running his tongue over his lips. “Oh.” Then he kissed Bucky back.

 Bucky kept Steve’s kiss with him through the morning, feeling the ghost of his lips on his own as he huddled with Lo in the river-misty clearing where the road met the river. They had been herded into groups, told to stand straight and walk tall. They would be evaluated further when they got to camp, wherever camp was, whatever it meant to be evaluated as a soldier.

 Steve’s kiss stayed with him as they began to march through the familiar woods of his childhood, where he and Steve had run, pelting each other with acorns and sliding through the mud, neglecting their chores on cold harvest days. They passed the outcropping where a few years ago he had brought Esse Tinker one warm spring afternoon, and lifted her up against the rocks, burying his face between her legs, making her sigh, then pant and then call out. Still it was Steve’s kiss that stayed with him, not Esse’s.

 “May Spring meet your every step,” Steve had whispered in the hushed dark.

 "May the sun shine on the works of your hands,” Bucky had replied.

 “Remember,” Steve said, “remember I’m with you.”

 And so he was.

 They turned the bend, and there was bridge where there had never been a bridge before. Bucky stopped. Ben stopped. Will stopped. Rye stopped - all the men from Brook and Rose and Emmer- stopped. There was a bridge- and beyond that bridge was something so dark and terrible he could not even begin to have words for it in his mind. The forest across the river was swallowed by a deep yawning thing; an emptiness that seemed endless. Beside him, Will began to shake. Bucky grasped his wrist in his hand.

 “What are you waiting for?” the Captain yelled. “Are you afraid? Are we not King’s men? We are not afraid- we are the feared!”

 But Bucky wasn’t a King’s man. He wasn’t even a soldier. He was just a boy from Brook who was seeing a bridge where there had been no bridge. Oh, Steve’s Ma was right. She was right. Terrible things awaited beyond the river. He should turn around and run right here and now. But Will’s wrist was still trembling in Bucky’s hands. He turned to look at him. Will was white-faced and probably about to hurl. No, he couldn’t leave his friends. They were his people now and he wasn’t going to turn tail and leave them to face this alone. He fumbled his hand into Will’s and squeezed.

 “It’s alright,” he lied. “It’s going to be alright.”

 

Brook had never been so empty. It had lost a majority of its population in one blow - all the able men gone to soldier for the King. They were a sturdy people though- the women would pick up their men’s work and the younger children would do the jobs of the elder children-  and they would have been fine were it not for the nightmares.

 Every time the residents of Brook fell into a sleep they dreamed of the ones gone- their sons, their fathers, their brothers, their lovers,  their friends. They dreamed of their deaths- each night a different death - in vivid, painful details. Nobody dared to sleep, but sleep took them anyway until they woke, screaming.

 One terrible night Steve dreamed of Bucky being dragged away by faceless figures, their gloved hands stark on his naked skin. Bucky was screaming- screaming and weeping - his body arching away from his captors, away from the pain. They threw him to the ground, a boot to his face, knocking his teeth together. Wake up, Steve thought to himself. Wake up, this is just a dream. But he had felt that kick in his own teeth, felt Bucky’s pain in his own face- the rush of breath through his lips as he gasped a gasp that collapsed into a wet cough. Bucky, Steve wanted to say. But he had no mouth there. His mouth was Bucky’s. Steve, Bucky muttered through the blood in his mouth, Steve.

 

Steve woke.

 Steve didn’t hesitate. He didn’t dress- he threw on his coat and rushed to the Barnes’s bare-footed through the snow. A lamp was lit in the window and he didn’t even have to knock before the door was swung open and he threw himself into Ma Barnes’s arms.

 “You too?” her voice was thick with tears.

 He nodded against her shoulder, and she drew him in tighter pressing him into her body, and running her hand through his hair as he wept.

 “It was just a dream, my boy. My Steve. Just a dream.”

 He looked up to see that the whole house was awake. Becca and Charlie were sitting on the floor wrapped in blankets playing cards. Bucky’s siblings both looked thinner than the last time Steve had seen them, and they were pale and wan. Steve knew he looked much the same.

 “Come on,” Becca said with a sigh, gathering up the cards and starting to reshuffle. “You might as well join us.”

 The survivor arrived at mid-summer, haggard and torn, all bones and nothing else. He stood in the town square, hunched and scarred, and missing a few fingers on his right hand. The people of Brook stopped and turned to look at him, for he had not said a thing. They looked and they saw that it was Matthew, the Tilley boy.

 “The King is dead,” Matthew said, “and Pierce rules in Istaban.”

 Steve had come running with Dr. Erskine when the news had reached his workshop. Now Dr. Erskine was making Matthew sit down, making him drink some water in slow, small sips.

 “What about-? Where is everyone else? Where’s Bucky?” Steve couldn’t help but ask.

 “Where’s Bucky?” Matthew chortled as if something were truly funny. “Dead, they’re all dead.”

 “Excuse me?” Steve said.

 “You heard what I said.” Matthew tore himself out of Dr. Erskine’s grasp and stumbled to his feet. “Did you hear that, people of Brook?” he called out, bringing the crowd in around him,  “Your sons are dead. They are dead. They starved and they froze and they were torn apart alive and left there to wallow until they died. And your Bucky,” he turned to Steve, “he fell, oh, he fell a long way, screaming so. Your Bucky fell and at least he died quick.”

 Someone wailed and someone shouted, and Steve’s legs went weak. Dr. Erskine was struggling to get Matthew to sit, to make him stop, but even injured and weak as he was, he was still stronger than the doctor. “You let us go,” he shouted, “you- all of you - you just waved us off, without questioning anything- without-”

 Matthew’s Ma had been called and she finally pushed herself to the front. “Matthew,” she said simply, and he was quiet. “Come,” she held out her hand, and he took it as a little boy does. The crowd parted around them as she lead him away, then closed again.

 Steve needed to find Becca - he needed to see her, so they could figure out what to tell Ma Barnes.

 There was a clatter of hooves on the cobble. George Barnes came galloping into town at as fast as a pace that his nag could take him, disheveled and distraught. He reined in his horse looking down at the population of Brook before him. “You too? Here too?” Then he slid off his horse and fell to his knees on the ground.

 No one moved to help him. “Where’s Winnie?” he cried. “Where’s Winnie?”

 Steve started to move, but it was Becca who shouldered her way through the crowd to stand before him, Charlie at her heels, though Steve knew that Charlie barely remembered his father.

 “You ought not to have come here,” Becca said to her father. “Now turn around and go back to Emmer. You have no place with us.”

 “Where’s Winnie?” he asked again.

 By now Steve had managed to thread through the crowd and came to stand at Becca’s side.

 “Rogers,” George said, “where’s my wife?”

 Becca scoffed. “I said, leave, old man.”

 George got to his feet. “He was my son, too.”

 “Don’t you dare,” now Steve wouldn’t stay quiet. “You don’t get to call him that, you have no right to. You get on out of here, you winter-cursed piece of dung.”

 George eyed Steve up and and down, and then turned toward his nag. “It should be you dead, Rogers,” he said, half-into his saddle. “By all rights, it should be you.” Then he turned his mount and kicked her into a trot.

Charlie scooped down, grabbing a pebble, and shot it square into the middle of his father’s back.

 Steve put his arms around Becca. The whole town was looking at them, it seemed. “Come,” he said, “let’s go find your Ma.”

 

In a way, Bucky’s death was worse than his Ma’s, and he hadn’t ever imagined anything could be worse than his Ma’s death. He’d had a body, at least, when she died. He’d been there, and had proof that she had stopped breathing.   Her body had been given to the fire and then back to the earth. He had none of those things with Bucky.

 Steve kept trying to draw him from memory- the set of his shoulders, the way his hair fell over his face- but nothing he got down seemed right, and so he threw everything into the fire, one drawing after another- one little funeral after the other.

 He had just assumed that Bucky would come back- maybe wounded, maybe different, but he would be back and they would be with each other until the end. There was a ghost of Bucky in everything Steve did, and everywhere he went, and there was a ghost of himself- his self with Bucky - in everything he did and everywhere he went.

 It was not that he wanted death, only that living seemed interminable and he wanted to see Bucky again.

 Steve spent a lot of time with the Barnes family now- in fact he had almost moved out of his Ma’s home entirely. Ma Barnes was having a hard time of it- they all were, the whole town was - and he would never forgive himself if in his grief he abandoned Bucky’s family.

 So he did his mending at the front window of the Barnes’s little house, though there wasn’t much mending to be done. Grief and pain made people less concerned with the small matter of the state of their clothing. All of Brook lived in a state of shocked dishevelment.

 It certainly was one way to subdue a hostile population, Steve thought as he watched Kinde, the Blacksmith’s wife walk across the green, stop for a long minute staring at something in distance, and then turn around and shuffle back the way she came.

 It felt sometimes that their grief was like a birder’s net that had been tripped down on all of them. They darted to and fro, bumping into each other, squalling and crying out, but unable to escape or help themselves or anyone else.

 Pierce’s soldier, stationed at the edge of the green, watched her as well. A woman like that was no threat, but the soldier watched anyways, as if she was one. They were all viewed as threats - soldiers stationed at every street, at the edge of every field.

 The soldiers had arrived not long after Matthew, setting up camp near the river, and insinuating themselves into the the town without word or explanation. One day they were just there and they had not left yet.

 Suddenly, there was a curfew. Suddenly, rooms were billeted, and barns were searched for weapons, though there were no weapons in Brook. Master Toby’s Inn was full, but he lived with a permanent scowl and the rounded shoulders of a man who was bearing both the weight of loss and of fear.

 But no one in Brook could even conceive of taking up arms against Pierce, and Steve knew it was not just Brook, but Rose and Emmer and everywhere else. People put their heads down in grief, they curled into themselves, like animals. It made Steve so angry, he didn’t know what do with the anger. So he sat and he sewed and he made sure there was food in the Barnses’ larder; that Ma Barnes was eating; that Becca was getting herself to Henry’s doing the job Bucky had once done; that Charlie was going to his last year of school.

 Sometimes he found Deryn Tinker waiting for him on his way back from Ash’s and he would go with her to his Ma’s house- the one he had shared with Bucky- and they would fuck - absently, angrily and in grief, Steve thinking of Bucky, and Deryn thinking probably of Rye, who she had been sweet on. But in the night he didn’t sleep but went up to that attic and laid his head down on the blankets that he and Bucky had slept on that last night, hoping to catch one last scent of him.

 

Just a year after the war came, Pierce himself arrived in Brook. He came without a guard, without additional soldiers, just one attendant standing by his side.  Again, the town gathered in the green. Word had gone out from the hostler that he had tended to Pierce’s horse, that the man who had killed all their sons and brothers and friends was in their midsts.

 At first Steve thought that he was nothing like he had imagined him to be - a monster, that is - for he was just a man alone standing on the green, dressed in plain clothes- no splendor or glory. But then, there was something about his face - so handsome as to be plain, and there was something about his pale eyes- every hair on Steve’s body stood on end. Becca reached out and took his hand. “What?” she whispered, swallowing, “what is he doing?”

 Sometimes, when he was ill, Steve would wake in the middle of the night, drowning in his own lungs, the weight on his chest unbearable. This was worse. It was worse than drowning. He was being swallowed whole by a terror so large it had no shape. He couldn’t speak in its grip. He couldn’t be. He had no body, no self, only Becca’s nails digging into his palm.

 Pierce smiled, and then he spoke.

 “Friends,”  he said. “My dear friends. I know you have suffered innumerable losses. I grieve for you. I grieve with you. The man who called himself King- unfit for the throne- took up a war and stole your children from you. I cannot undo what has been done, but I promise to lead you well, and I promise there will be safety under my rule.”

 As he spoke, the stream running through the green began to rise. It poured over its banks and over the small footbridge. Cold water pooled at Steve’s feet, surging higher and higher,  up to his knees. The crowd shifted like nervous cattle, but like cattle in a pen, they were hemmed in by soldiers stationed at every corner of the green. Steve braced himself against the current, pulling Becca close to him.  Cather Minner grabbed Steve’s other hand gasping. “He’s going to flood this whole town,” she whispered.

 “So now,” Pierce continued in the same open, warm voice,  “I come with a request of my own- not your sons, not your children- only one of you- one brave volunteer to come serve with me and help to build a better world. I will take no one against their will, but I do hope that you will answer my call.”

Pierce smiled again, and the water went rushing back into the stream, pulling the crowd forward in its wake. They were huddled together like sheep sheltering from the rain.  

Steve glanced around him at  the women and old men’ the children- Becca, Charlie, Lo’s nephew, Winnow and Isaac. He saw  Ash eyeing him; he saw white faces and bent shoulders. He had never loved this town so much, and never had he felt so apart from it.

 “Don’t you dare,” Becca hissed. “Don’t you fucking dare. I’ll never forgive you.”

 Steve only glanced at her furious face, and then pressed a kiss to her the back of her hand.

 “I hate you,” she cried, as he untangled his fingers from hers. “I hate you,” she cried as he took a step forward, head held high, and faced Pierce. “I hate you,” she cried, as he said, “I will come with you. I will answer your call, but know that I will never serve you.”

 He was given the night to say his farewells and settle his affairs- not that he had many affairs to settle. Ash patted him clumsily on the the back. “You’re a good man,” he said, coughing. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do without your nimble fingers.”

 Steve ducked his head. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll do fine, master.” There were now plenty of children with nimble fingers in Brook whose parents would need extra coin.

 When he left the tailor’s Dr. Erskine was waiting for him, along with a good number of other people. Dr. Erskine grasped his arm, “When you’re done with your farewells, come see me in my workshop,” he said quietly.

 Steve nodded, wanting to ask what was so important, but then was accosted by Anne Offen who threw her arms around him and wailed, though she had never really spoken to him before this moment. And so it went- handshakes and hugs and tears. By the time he arrived at the Barnes’s he was well near exhausted.

 Ma Barnes gave a cry when she saw him. “Steve, why are you doing this, Steve?” She took his head in her hands and pressed a long kiss to his forehead.

 “Ma,” he said, holding her, “you know that it was a threat. It was going to be me or someone else- and who else could you spare?”

 “Well, that’s bullshit,” Charlie spat. “There are plenty of other people to spare.” Steve raised an eyebrow at him.

 “I’m just doing my part. If Bucky could do it, I can too.” They didn’t talk about Bucky much, but it needed to be said.

 Charlie rolled his eyes. “Bucky always did say you were too stubborn to live.”

 Steve began to laugh somehow. “I suppose I am. Bucky was often right.”

 Ma Barnes snorted. “He wasn’t right nearly as often as he thought he was, that boy of mine.” She ran her hands through Steve’s hair. “You come back to us, Steve Rogers.”

 “I’ll try,” he said, and he hugged her and then Charlie, and then even Becca who had been standing in the corner glaring silently.

 “I still hate you,” she said as her fingers dug into his shoulders.

 “I’ll pack you something for the road,” Ma Barnes said, “who knows what he’ll feed you out there, if-”

 “Thank you,” Steve replied before she could finish her thought and kissed her cheek again. “Dr. Erskine was wanting me, I’ll come back when I’m done.”

 He glanced back as he closed the door on the Barnes’s house. Charlie and Becca had gathered around their Ma, leaning on her wordlessly. “I’m sorry, Buck-” he whispered. “I have to do this. They’ll be fine. They have each other.”

 There was silence where there should have been an answer- in the late afternoon air, in the willow on the doorpost, in all the places Bucky wasn’t. There was silence in his heart- in all the places Bucky was.

Steve steeled himself and went to go find Dr. Erskine.

 

Dr. Erskine hustled Steve into his workshop, hand between his shoulders, pushing him into the dim light. “I have something for you,” he said, when he had closed and barred the door.

He bent down and opened a cupboard that Steve had never seen, or never noticed before. Carefully he pulled out a silver gauntlet and handed to Steve. The gauntlet was light in his arms, and looking carefully Steve saw that it was not molded out of connecting pieces of silver, but woven out of thin wire, like filigree. It was beautiful, to be sure, but it did not seem like it would be of any use to him in the field of battle- if the field of battle was indeed where he was going.

 “Your mother made that for you,” Dr. Erskine said.

 “My mother?”

 “Yes. She thought you might need it one day.”

 Steve looked down at the gauntlet again and swallowed, running his fingers over the swirls of silver. It seemed such a waste that his mother had worked so hard on the glove, and obviously with so much love. He wondered what she was thinking, making it. It wasn’t like her to be caught up in sentiment and beauty, or to make anything without any real use.

 Dr. Erskine was watching him, a small smile tugging at the edge of his lips. “Put it on,” he said.

 Steve turned the gauntlet over in his hands, frowning.

 “I know what you’re thinking. Put it on.”

 He put it on. It was surprisingly comfortable and weighed almost nothing. He held his arm up to the light. His small left hand looked genteel, and elegant and - beautiful, as if he were some high born noble woman, which he was not.

 Dr. Erskine was smiling. “That my boy, is not a gauntlet.”

 “It’s not?”

 “No. Snap your wrist, like so-”

Steve’s wrist gave small crack as he snapped it. His fist closed of its own volition, and suddenly he was holding something big and weighted- a shield - a large, round, heavy shield that covered his whole upper body and most of his lower body too. He was surprised he was still standing, holding something that large- but it was made of a metal he had never encountered before.  It was a dull burnished silver color, and light. And yet, it seemed sturdy and protective- it would not easily shatter. He looked up at Dr. Erskine.

 “It’s a shield.”

 “Yes.”

 Steve felt the tears brimming at the corner of his eyes. “My Ma made me a shield. How?” he looked down at it sitting so naturally on his arm- as if he had been born to it- “How did she do this?”

 “Your mother had a magic that was her own, and she loved you very much.”

 “How do I-” he snapped his wrist again, and from one breath to the next he was wearing a silver gauntlet again.

 “Yes, like that.”

 “I think I need to sit down,” Steve said, pulling up a chair.

 “Sit then, but you don’t have too much time.”

 It all came rushing back - Pierce and the terror that came with him; what Steve himself had volunteered to do. The worst part though was that he didn’t actually know what he was volunteering for. All he knew that tomorrow he would be leaving everything he had ever known behind and that Pierce would be his master. He looked down at the gauntlet on his hand. He knew his mother had meant to protect him, but he just didn’t know how it would help him. Surely, he wouldn’t be able to keep it.

 Well, he pulled his shoulders back, if Bucky could face death and just up and leave everything behind, so could he.

 Dr. Erskine put a gentle hand on his shoulder and cleared his throat. “Steve, my boy,” he said, “I also have a gift for you.”

 Steve looked up at the good doctor. He was the closest thing to a father he had ever known, and he looked the same as he ever had, not handsome and slightly bent and worn; his dark brown eyes were kind and warm.

 “I can give you a year,” Dr. Erskine said.

 “What?”

 “I can give you a year to become what you must be- for your body to match your heart - but after that I won’t be able to hold him off any more.”

 For the second time that day, Steve’s eyes brimmed with tears. “What do you mean ‘become what I must be’?”

 Dr. Erskine just shook his head, and his lips twitched in something too rueful to be a smile. “What you already are- a good man.”

 Steve frowned. “ I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything about today. Pierce, my Ma, you- it’s -”

 “I know, my boy. I know. But we don’t have time for this now. I’m going to put my hands on your head, and when it done, you must run.”

 “To where?”

 Again he shook his head. “To whom. There is group- I hope there is still a group- they call themselves the Howlies. They’ll be able to help you for now.”

 “How will I find them?”

 “I imagine they’ll find you.”

 Steve made a frustrated noise.

 Dr. Erskine’s hands were gentle on his head. “Are you ready?”

 “No.”

 It felt like nothing- only Dr. Erskine whispering something- an incantation, maybe, his thumbs moving restlessly through Steve’s hair. When he lifted his hands, Steve felt no different than he had the moment before - confused, afraid - angry.

 Dr. Erskine pulled him up out of the chair. “I wish I could give you more time, but even I don’t have that strength. One year- I can hold him off for one year. Now run.”

 Steve ran.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Stay tuned for Winter's Kiss Part II, coming soon.


End file.
